Archives for the month of: May, 2019
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Milwaukee: Former School Board President Convicted of Accepting Bribes from Charter Operator

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
7

 

Former Milwaukee School Board President Michael Bonds was convicted of accepting bribes to help a Philadelphia charter school operator. 

As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Bonds, 60, pleaded guilty to two counts in federal court in Philadelphia. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine at his sentencing, tentatively set for September, but which will depend on when he completes his pledged cooperation with an ongoing federal investigation…

Bonds served on the MPS board from 2007 until he abruptly resigned in July 2018, nine months before his term was to end. 

He was charged last month with conspiracy and violations of the Travel Act for taking kickbacks in return for votes beneficial to Universal Cos. between 2014 and 2016. Two unnamed Universal executives were implicated in the scheme but have not been charged.

Veteran Milwaukee journalist Alan Borsuk described the affair as “a scandal with few rivals in the recent history of Milwaukee education.”  He sums up the details.

Universal Academy. Universal came into Milwaukee riding some celebrity appeal — its founder, Kenny Gamble, was a soul music star — and a reputation for running some decent charter schools, some housing projects and other ventures in its home town, Philadelphia.

Universal also initially named a well-regarded Milwaukee educator as its local leader. Ronn Johnson had founded and led the YMCA Young Leaders Academy. But months before Universal opened, Johnson was charged with sexually assaulting several students years earlier. A few months later, he died in a fire at his home in Brown Deer. His death was ruled a suicide.

The president and CEO of Universal in Philadelphia, Rahim Islam, stepped in to oversee the Milwaukee operation and spent a lot of time in the city. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he is one of the main figures in the bribery scheme involving Bonds. 

At one point, Universal schools enrolled 1,000 students.

Perhaps because enrollment didn’t meet expectations and then started to fall, and perhaps because Universal was overextended with the large amount of MPS property it was using, Universal began to slide. Islam became unreachable (he had been glad to talk in early times). Leadership of the schools kept changing. It was clear Universal wasn’t investing in Milwaukee any further.

And things got worse. First two schools closed. Then, the third. It was done abruptly, leaving kids and staff in the lurch.

And now a former Board President is headed to jail. Very sad.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Milwaukee, Privatization

Montana Supreme Court Struck Down Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
2

Somehow I missed this important story when it happened last December. The Montana Supreme Court struck down a tuition tax credit program as a transparent effort to violate the state constitution’s prohibition of sending public funds to religious schools.  Other states have adopted such devious strategies to send public money to religious schools, despite their state constitution. Florida is a leader in ignoring its state constitution.

“The Montana Supreme Court delivered a win for church-state separation and public education last week when it struck down the state’s private school voucher program.

“Americans United, joined by other civil-rights organizations, had urged the court through a friend-of-the-court brief to prevent the voucher scheme – called a tuition tax credit program – from funding private, religious education. Our brief explained that the program violated the “no-aid” provision in Montana’s constitution, which protects residents’ religious freedom by ensuring taxpayer money isn’t used for religious purposes – including religious education.

“The Montana Supreme Court agreed with us: “We ultimately conclude the Tax Credit Program aids sectarian schools in violation of Article X, Section 6, and that it is unconstitutional in all of its applications,” wrote the court majority.

“Montana taxpayers should never be forced to fund religious education – that’s a fundamental violation of religious freedom,” said AU president and CEO Rachel Laser. “The Montana Supreme Court’s decision protects both church-state separation and public education. It’s a double win.”

“The state’s legislature passed the tuition tax credit program in 2015. It allows “donors” to give money to organizations that pay for students’ private school tuition, then the state gives the “donors” a full credit on their tax bills – so it’s not really a donation after all. This is essentially a voucher program because it funnels public money to private schools.”

Categories Montana, Vouchers

Jan Resseger: The Futility of School Closings

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
3

 

Jan Resseger does not title her post “The Futility of School Closings.” She calls it “Considering School Closures as Philadelphia’s Empty Germantown High School Faces Sheriff’s Sale.” I inserted “futility,” because that is what I see as I read the books and studies she cites.

I am persuaded by books like Eve Ewing’s Ghosts in the Schoolyard (Chicago) and by Shani Robinson’s None of the Above (Atlanta) that the primary purpose of school closings is to gentrify low-income neighborhoods, push out poor black people, and open charters to lure white middle-class families. Chicago lost 200,000 black people from 2000 to 2016. Coincidence?

Read Jan’s great post and see what you think.

Categories Atlanta, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia

Steven Singer Has a Very Innovative Idea for Schools: More People

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
19

 

Steven Singer goes through the long list of failed innovations that “Reformers” have foisted on the schools.

Think how many billions have been wasted on standardized tests, interim assessments, data coaches, test-based evaluations, Common Core, etc.

He has an idea for an innovation that he is certain will make a difference: more people. 

Have you walked into a public school lately? Peak your head into the faculty room. It’s like snatching a glance of the flying Dutchman. There are plenty of students, but at the front of the overcrowded classrooms, you’ll find a skeleton crew.

Today’s public schools employ 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by 800,000 students. So if we want today’s children to have not better but just the same quality of services kids received in this country only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more teachers!

Instead, our children are packed into classes of 25, 30 even 40 students!

And the solution is really pretty simple – people not apps. Human beings willing and able to get the job done.

If we were fighting a war, we’d find ways to increase the number of soldiers in our military. Well, this is a war on ignorance – so we need real folks to get in the trenches and win the battle.

We need teachers, counselors, aides and administrators promoted from within and not functionaries from some think tank’s management program.

We need more people with masters or even more advanced teaching degrees – not business students with a three-week crash course in education under their belts who are willing to teach for a few years before becoming a self-professed expert and then writing education policy in the halls of government.

We need people from the community taking a leadership role deciding how our schools should be run, not simply appointing corporate lackeys to these positions at charter or voucher schools and narrowing down the only choices parents have to “Take It” or “Leave It.”

We need people. Real live people who can come into our schools and do the actual work with students.

What an idea! Real people to do the work, instead of machines!

Thats innovation!

 

Categories Class size, Common Core, Innovation

The Nation: Meet ALEC’s Little Brother, ACCE

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2019 //
34

 

We know ALEC as the corporate Bill Mill that enlists 2,000 state legislators as members. ALEC promotes a far-right libertarian agenda that is anti-government, anti-regulation, and pro-unregulated free enterprise. Among its sponsors are the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and many major corporations who don’t want government getting in the way of low wages and high profits. ALEC supports fracking and opposes gun control and environmental regulation. It despises unions and public schools.it loves charters and vouchers.

Writing in The Nation, Brendan Fisher Andy Mary Bottari report that ALEC has a new venture, the American City County Exchange, which met for the first time last year.

Its purpose is to encourage local officials who are aligned with its agenda. Specifically, ALEC wants local officials who believe that localities must defer to state officials. That way, when a local government tries to raise the minimum wage higher than that of the state, the locals must back off. If the locals want to fight climate change, they can’t. If they want to grant LGBT rights, they can’t go Father than state law.

This, ACCE has the unenviable task of persuading its members at the local level that local control is obsolete.

What a strange pretzel these rightwingers have twisted themselves into.

 

Categories ALEC

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 7, High School Graduation

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
14

 

This is the last of the podcasts that Gary Rubinstein reviews. There’s dissent in the high school. The students rebel against the discipline. Most teachers bail out.

But graduation comes at last. Of the 73 students who started, 16 graduates made it. It annoys Gary that the interviewer tiptoes around the issue of attrition. Senior year started with 17 students. One mysteriously disappeared. 16 survived the Success Academy boot camp.

The 2019 graduating class consists of 26 students. The president of Harvard University will deliver the commencement address to this tiny cohort, a sign of Eva’s power, money, and connections.

These 26 students are the survivors of a class that originally included 83 students. Eighty percent of the graduates are females.

But there is progress: the first graduating class was 16 of 73. The second was 26 of 83.

No one seems to wonder what happened to those that didn’t make it to graduation.

Has Eva created a template for American public education?

To see all of Gary’s posts on this topic, here they are.

Categories Harlem Success Academy, High School Graduation, Privatization

Los Angeles: One of the Richest Cities in World Can’t Afford Elementary School Libraries

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
23

 

I am often asked what billionaires should do with their money if they stopped investing in privatization.

Here is a small project for billionaires in California.

Los Angeles may close its elementary school libraries. 

Can’t afford them.

Where are you, Reed Hastings? Eli Broad? Bill Bloomfield? Arthur Rock? Mark Zuckerberg?

You give millions to charters and TFA, and what good have you done?

Do something real.

Be the Andrew Carnegie of LA.

Support libraries for elementary schools.

No, it won’t transform everything. But it will change lives.

Steve Lopez wrote in the LA Times:

Here we go again, tumbling down the shaft and into a bizarro world in which school libraries lock out students who need them most.

L.A. Unified elementary school libraries are on the chopping block once again, and library aides, many of whom could lose their jobs, are screaming for justice.

Some L.A. Unified board members, meanwhile, have made passionate pleas to keep the doors open.

“If you’re not reading by grade level by third grade, you’re going to struggle for the rest of your life,” said board member Scott Schmerelson, who has introduced a resolution calling for the district to come up with the necessary funding.

But just a few months after the L.A. Unified teachers’ strike drew strong public support for better pay and more resources for the struggling district, budget woes are forcing miserable choices that will hit students hard.

“An elementary school library is one of the more magical places in a child’s life,” said Meredith Kadlec, a second-grade parent who has been writing letters in the campaign to ward off cuts. “Imagination is born from books, and what about the kids who don’t get that enrichment at home? I feel like we’re going the wrong way in America when libraries are at risk.”

They’ve been at risk for years now in L.A. Unified. Many years ago, every school had a fully funded librarian. But as budget problems became more severe, teacher-librarians gave way to library aides, who then got laid off by the hundreds before being rehired. In the recent past, some libraries have been locked up despite the district having spent millions on new books. Typically, elementary school libraries are open only every other week as it is, and aides split their time between two schools

The strike settlement earlier this year resulted in teacher raises and promises of eventual reduced class size, nurses on every campus, and a commitment to have a teacher-librarian on every middle and high school campus.

But elementary schools got no commitment on library aides. In recent years, those positions — which used to be directly funded by the district — became optional expenses made at the discretion of principals. But those principals have to make gut-wrenching decisions with limited discretionary funds at their disposal. And the needs, in a district in which 80% of the roughly 600,000 students live in poverty and 90% are minorities, always exceed the available money.

Categories Budget Cuts, Librarians, Libraries, Los Angeles

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 6 on Success Academy, Its Political Campaign to Get Free Space, and Its Teaching Strategy of “Rip and Redo”

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
14

Gary Rubinstein deals in this segment with two controversial sagas in the brief and tumultuous life of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Chain. 

The first came about because Mayor DeBlasio declared that he would rein in Eva Moskowitz when he was elected (under Bloomberg and Klein, she got whatever she wanted). Eva’s billionaire friends promptly put up a kitty of millions to run emotional television ads claiming that her students were about to be tossed out into the street, when the reality was that she was trying to claim extra space and push out children with serious handicaps. Her campaign was skillfully managed, and she ended up with legislation guaranteeing that the city would give her the space she wanted or pay her rent. Governor Cuomo embraced the charter cause,and the mayor suffered a defeat.

Then there was the infamous video, leaked to the New York Times, showing a teacher ripping up the paper of a first grader and sending her as punishment to a corner to calm down (although the teacher seemed to be more agitated than the child). Most people thought the teacher humiliated the child, but the practice seems to be commonplace at SA.

The next segment is the last.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy, New York City

Gary Rubinstein: Episode 5 Spills the Beans about the “Success” of Success Academy

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
17

identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy,

Gary Rubenstein identifies episode 5 as the crucial reveal about Success Academy, where even a supportive reporter notes the behaviors that shows the central message of Success Academy: Control.

Star Wars fans know that Episode 5 — The Empire Strikes Back, was the best of the Star Wars saga.  And of Beethoven’s nine symphonies, the most famous is surely his fifth.  Likewise, of the seven episodes of Startup’s podcast about Success Academy, the fifth (found here) is the most powerful and the most important.

To say that this episode has the ‘smoking gun’ would be an understatement.  This episode has not just the smoking gun, but a video of the culprit firing that gun.  I’m not sure why this episode hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.  Maybe because it is so many hours into the podcast and most people don’t listen to all the parts.  Or maybe there are so many Success Academy excuses and talking points weaved into all the other episodes that this episode just seems like a small blemish on a generally favorable portrait of the controversial charter network.  Whatever the reason, I’m hoping that people will take the time to listen to the whole podcast and to share it, along with my summary, widely.

This episode is entitled ‘Expectations’ and it explores whether or not the expectations Success Academy has for it’s students and for the parents of those students are something that the students and parents rise to meet or if they scare away potential families and families who struggle to keep up with those expectations.

They play a tape of Eva Moskowitz speaking to families who have been accepted into Success Academy:

EVA: Hi everyone, I’m Eva Moskowitz the founder and CEO of Success Academies. It’s very nice to meet you in this large auditorium.

LISA: Eva paces across the stage in stilettos, a fitted blue dress and leather bomber jacket, her standard attire. She’s speaking to a couple hundred parents, near Success Academy Union Square. That’s one of 30 Success elementary schools offering spots to new students.

EVA: First of all, congratulations for those of you who have won the lottery.

LISA: This year Success Academy had a little over 3000 spots for about 17000 applicants. That means through a random lottery, only about one out of every six kids got a spot.

Eva tells the audience that she designed Success Academy with the hope that kids would fall in love with school. They have science labs in kindergarten, kids learning chess early on. She touts the school’s high academic standards. But she is also clear about some of the things that parents might not like.

EVA: We believe in homework. A lot of it. So if you feel really strongly that that is not something you like, you probably shouldn’t come to Success. Cause we’re going to be arguing for 12 years about homework and we’re gonna win.

LISA: Want small class sizes? We don’t have that. And, of course…

EVA: Tests. Anyone against tests? Anyone want to be part of the opt-out movement? Great, thank you for your honesty. Success is not the place for you.

LISA: Success is not the place for you. Parents start hearing that line early on. Eva makes it clear at this meeting that they’ll expect a lot of parents.

EVA: We’re very very strict on kids getting to school on time. School starts August 20th and you must be here the first day of school, no exceptions. We expect at a minimum for you to return our phone calls. I had a parent who was refusing to meet with the principal. God forbid. No no no no no.

About half of the families that get into Success Academy after winning ‘the lottery’ choose to not go there, maybe because of messages like this.

The devastating part in this episode follows a 5th grader at Success Academy named Nia.  Nia had been at Success Academy since kindergarten and had passed both sections of the 3rd and 4th grade state tests.  But she was getting about a 70 average in 5th grade so the school said that she was at risk of repeating 5th grade.  According to the podcast, this is something that is said to hundreds of families each year.

Getting ‘left back’ is a big deal.  It has major consequences that can affect the rest of a student’s life.  From then on, that student will be a year older than her classmates, always having to explain why she is a year older, that she was ‘left back.’  The school said she would have to get her grades up, which she did, to about an 80.  But the school said that it wasn’t enough.  It didn’t matter that she was now comfortably passing.  It also didn’t matter that she had passed the state tests the previous years and that she was likely to pass the state test again this year.  They said that when they took it all into consideration they decided not to promote her.  However, they would promote her if she would transfer out of Success Academy.

The amazing hypocrisy here is that Success Academy is saying that the fact that this girl passed the state tests was not enough.  They are actually admitting that passing the state tests — the thing that the entire reputation of Success Academy is based on — is not an accurate measure of achievement.

The podcast goes on to compare SA to a regular public school. Gary finds the comparison shallow and disappointing.

Categories Cruelty, Discipline, Harlem Success Academy

Arthur Camins: Why We Must Push Back Against Corruption to Protect the Common Good

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2019 //
15

 

 

Arthur Camins writes here about two different worlds, two different perceptions of reality. 

On one side is money and power, defending privatization, promoting disruption, and ignoring corruption.

On the others are the defenders of the common good, who do not have money and power.

In recent years, people associated with the hedge fund industry, technology titans such as the Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jobs families, and right-wing foundations have all invested financial and political capital to promote charter schools. Their predominant ideological lens– no matter their political party affiliation– is competition and associated risk. That is why the liberal Gates and the conservative Walton families find common cause on charter schools. Long- and short-term triumphs and failures are essential features of their entrepreneurial worldview. Through that lens “start-ups” come and go, IPOs rise and fall, businesses merge, and divisions divested.  Lost jobs and careers are collateral damage–especially when the victims are poor and/or not White. That is their normal. It is the world in which they have triumphed.  They look at the world through the lens of their personal success. The losers in the process are, well–just part of how things get done. They have wealth and power and seek to impose and extend their will and perspective on everything within their reach. The public sector–including schools–is in their way. Increasingly democracy, and with it, government regulation is in their way too. Hence, they favor private over elected school boards. They are a tiny minority, but their perspective has gained bipartisan political and mass-media traction.

Another lens is the common good and its explicit companion, cross-racial unity. It has no wealth and power to extend its reach. However, it has a distinct advantage.  It represents the vast majority of Americans.  The questions you ask frame the answers you get.  Let’s ask, “Do you favor single a democratically-governed, high-quality public education system for every child or two taxpayer-funded systems: One privately-governed and another democratically governed?” I haven’t seen such a poll, nor have I seen any that ask: “Is it fair to drain money from public schools to fund charter schools?” or “Is it acceptable for schools to frequently open and close?” My best guess is that the stability, the common good, and racial unity will win hands down over the disruptive, market competition, and racially-divisive perspectives.

Read on to see where Camins is going as he explores the two perspectives.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization
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